Still Alive, V

[fearless]

The subject was his needs and feelings are valid.


THIS is where I get confused again. I thought the main goal was HD's integrity and self-esteem which he tested by making a statement he knew would get a response from MsHD and facing her without backing down. After gaining his integrity and self esteem, making love will be the result. In the statements here I feel like we are back at making love as the main goal.

I am not trying to be contrary. I think that this an important issue for HD to sort out. What is his main goal? Keep that at the forefront and keep working on it. At the same time, keep an eye on all the secondary goals and make sure he does not negatively impact those secondary goals while meeting the main goal.

From my point of view HD was the one who brought up the argument (They both agreed that the clothing was an unlikely real-life choice), he also then brought in the making love argument to convince his wife to take his opinion seriously AND to convince her that her attitude about sex was an issue for him. Which does he want her focusing on?

That was my whole point with simplifying his response. Of course BF is right about how MsHD was "testing" him. That is why I would have met it head on rather than "backdooring" into another touchier subject.

Just to be clear about how I see the objectification/ appreciation argument and all the feminist BS cr*p she spews in regards to your primary goal of integrity and self-esteem and secondary goal of ML, I see it as a wall that HD should just go around. Scaling it or trying to break it down is a waste of time and energy at the moment. Would he even care if she continued to feel that way IF he had his integrity and the two of them are making love regularly? It is a red herring IMO. Leave it alone.

To be very clear if she insists on bringing the feminist BS topics up, let her. Be respectful, state your opinion, don't apologize for your differing opinion and don't try to change her opinion, etc. I just would not be the one bringing these topics up if I were HD and I would especially NOT use it to get his points across.

And back to the main goal of integrity and self-esteem and focusing on yourself.

Here is another personal example (have I not mentioned how I hate using my personal examples??) -that as a woman keeping a good body image and feeling attractive, probably a typical issue, was an issue for me. For me whether or not xH and I made love (or whether he spent time with me, or demonstrated any other LL) was not a big factor in whether I saw myself as attractive. Some days we might have ML and I still felt unattractive and others days we did not and I felt great about myself. My point is that I worked to separate myself from my xH (or anyone) so that I was not dependent upon them to feel attractive. That does NOT mean that I did not want to know that xH found me attractive. Of course I wanted and needed to know that. I am just saying that that is a different feeling than the internal feeling of being attractive. By having that internal feeling I did not have to constantly rely on my xH to always prop me up (he did have his own life after all!) Does that make sense? Can you see how that is applicable to you in the case of integrity and self esteem?


Edit to add

I completely agree with BF's comment about kissing her when she comes to bed.